Into the Light
by Houkakyou
Summary: Yusuke always knew that death was just around the corner for the Rekai Tantei, but breaking the news to Shiori Minamino that her son was dead was one of the hardest things he'd ever done - especially since his friend was still alive.
1. Out of the Darkness

**A/N: This story is going to start out rather darkly before it turns happy and fulfilling again, but please don't be discouraged. Read the whole thing (it's a two-shot) before you turn away just because Shuuichi has been offed. I'm not entirely fond of character-death fics, so I wouldn't do that to you guys. (For the most part.)**

**Anyway, enough of my rambling. Read on (and don't forget to review!)**

**-  
Into the Light**

**Part I  
-**

"My little boy is what?"

Yusuke winced and repeated himself with no small amount of regret. "He's dead, Mrs. Minamino. The police found his...remains in an alley off of the main neighborhood last night. The only thing they told me about it besides that was that they couldn't give you the body. They're going to cremate him and give you the ashes later." They had actually used the word 'pieces' in relation to his friend's body and one cop had mentioned that the larger bits were rather small, but there was no way he could let Kurama's mother know such a thing. "I'm really sorry. We had been out late last night and I was too tired to walk home with him; I never thought he'd be, well…"

The woman's lip trembled for a second before tears began slipping down her cheeks and she slid to the floor in a heap. "Shuuichi! Oh, my son! Shuu...!"

Yusuke winced and bent down to rub her shoulder, lost for words. What could anyone really say in a situation like this? Her precious son had been mysteriously murdered and hadn't even had the chance to say 'goodbye'. "Shiori...a couple of years ago he gave me a box to give to you if anything ever happened to him. I think it's time for me to pass it on to you. I don't know what's in it, but I think it was something really precious to him." It hadn't actually been years, just a month or two, but she wouldn't ask as many questions if she didn't think he'd been expecting this to happen.

Standing up and going over to his bag, he reached in and withdrew a long, thin box with a slim silver bow on it. Turning back and handing it to Shiori - who was making a half-hearted attempt to dry her leaking eyes on a scarred arm - he knelt down and watched her open the package with sad reverence.

Flipping open the lid, a fresh wave of tears made themselves known as she removed a fragile object and cradled it to her breast. Yusuke frowned at the sight of crimson and green. "Is that...?"

She nodded, giving little hiccoughs to accompany the tears. "This...Oh, Shuuichi. When he turned four and I discovered how much he loved plants, I bought him a small rosebush for his birthday. It didn't have any buds yet, but I showed him how to prune and care for it properly and within the month it had a little baby rose, sweet as could be, blooming. I was so proud... I told him that it looked like another little Shuuichi because of the red and the green, and he promptly snipped it off of the bush and presented it to me in a little vase. I kept it on my dresser for almost a year before it finally withered, but one day it disappeared from my room. I was worried the maids had taken it, since I had wanted to press and dry it, but I never found it...and now it turns out Shuu-chan had kept it..." Shaking hands brought the dried rose up and stroked a delicate petal, coating it with the salty residue of her sadness. "Thank you, Yusuke, for being there all these years for him. He never really had any friends until you and yours came along and swept him up in your group like he had always belonged. I never saw him as happy as he has been these past five years."

The raven grunted awkwardly, again at a loss for what to say. How could women toggle moods like that, going from the clouds of sadness to the silver lining on the edges? "I...Thanks, Shiori. He was an awesome friend, and I'm glad I knew him. I never realized that we were the first people he'd really gotten close to, though. I guess everybody always assumed that since he was popular, he had to have a lot of friends. But I know he would've taken you over us any day. He would've done anything for you; it was really obvious that you were the most important person in his life."

Kurama's mother only began to cry harder at his words, and Yusuke sighed internally. He wouldn't be able to comfort a crying woman he barely knew forever. He had to get going, but he knew Kurama would've sicced his shimaneki grass on him if he didn't stay with her through the worst of it. The redhead was gone now, and the woman needed all the support she could get.

-  
Okay, enough of the sadness. Let's get on with the bright side and Into the Light, part II!


	2. Into the Light

**A/N: I actually have nothing against Shiori (that poor woman, she's been through so much), but it had to be done. Now – because Kurama is totally my favorite character and no fic would be the same without him – here's your daily dose of silver and gold!**

**Seriously, I love reviews.  
**

**Into the Light**

**Part II**

"Thank you, Yuusuke, for staying with her."

The detective plopped down on the bare wood and sighed, shaking his head. "It was no problem. I figured it was the least I could do, considering that she will never see her son again, even in the form of a cold body at the funeral. It was really time-consuming to get her to calm down enough to sleep, though... But enough of my troubles. I'm more worried about you, silver. She was your mother, after all, and parting is never easy, especially a parting like that."

"She was not my mother, Yuusuke. Shiori Minamino, for all I admired and loved her, was Shuuichi Minamino's mother, and he does not exist anymore. Youko Kurama is who I am once again, and my mother died of old age almost twenty-eight hundred years ago."

"But still, silver..."

"No buts, Yusuke. It was time for me to reclaim this body once again, and discarding the physical body of Shuuichi had to be done. I will adjust to having a tail and ears and no mother and relatives, just as I accustomed myself to a mother and relatives instead of my tail and ears twenty years ago. I am now a spirit fox once again, and the largest concession I am able to make is for you to call me 'silver' instead of Youko. I know it is hard for you and all the others to believe I can escape from this and reaccustom myself so easily, but I have been preparing for this for many years. My decision to accompany Shiori for an extra decade was only a delay in my plan. It was either this, or death - if I had continued as Kurama for any longer, Shuuichi's body would have dissolved under the weight of a demon spirit and my demon spirit and youki would have withered and rotted inside of a human core. I was pressing it, living like that for as long as I did."

Yusuke made an indecipherable noise and flopped down the rest of the way so he was lying spread-eagled on the floor. "Hey, as long as you're not so torn up by this that you're going to kill yourself or cut us off... I'm not intensely worried for your mom - sorry, Shiori - or anything since I figure, and I know this is going to be hard for you to hear, that she'll be able to get over your death in a couple years especially since she has Hatanaka and the other Shuichi. But what are you going to do now that you're here in Makai with us? I mean, you did have a life here, right? Hiei's kinda just been a loner for his, what, five hundred years of life?, which is why it wasn't a problem for him to join the Tantei under Koenma 'till his sentence was through, and I'm just going to be around since I graduated a while ago and have no real obligations in the human world except for Keiko and my mom. Of course, I think that Keiko's finally got it in her head that I'm not gonna marry her...I'm nineteen, you know? You were twenty, Kuwabara's nineteen and in some great college... We had our entire lives ahead of us, and I think it's finally kicked in for them that you and I aren't going to be there with them forever. After I turn twenty I'll be staying in Makai permanently to help out with Raizen's old lands and fighting every three years in that tournament until I finally win and can sit back and relax. But you don't really have an obligation anywhere... Remember the first demon world tournament, when you were fighting Shigure? Everybody watched you renounce the Youko side of yourself, and Yomi and everyone kinda gave up on getting you back after that. So do you still have a life to go to anymore?"

The fox demon was silent for many minutes after his friend finished his speech. "I don't know, Yusuke. Officially, it has only been two decades since I abandoned this form and my connections should still be out there. Twenty years is really only a blink of an eye for most demons, and normally an absence like that could easily be smoothed over. But you are correct, many have certainly given up on me, and it is now no longer assured that I can find the demons I once knew and was friends with. You probably are aware of some of what I am about to tell you, but for the past two millennia I have carried the title 'the king of thieves' and have had many demons working with me. You know Yomi, obviously, and though we now maintain attitudes of neutrality towards each other, I still hate the bastard and I'm sure he feels similarly towards me. He was once my subordinate, and after far to many losses incurred at his hands I decided to off him - he wasn't always blind, you know. That was, in part, my doing. But he isn't the only one you've met. I'm sure you remember the creature I defeated a while back that took the form of a bat demon named Kuronue? He was once my dearest partner, a true equal to me in thieving prowess until the fateful day he was caught in a trap and killed. This may all seem rather like storytelling to you, but my point is that many of the demons I once knew are now lost to me, be it through physical means or mental. My last hope is the Thieves' Village and, if that fails, Fushimi Inari."

The mazoku frowned and shifted position so his head was propped up by his arm. "The thieves' village? That sounds ominous. And isn't Fushimi Inari a human shrine? You know, the one with all the fox guardians and torii gates?"

Youko sighed and uncrossed his legs to stand up. Walking over to the shoji door, he slid it aside to reveal a dreary courtyard and a pink-haired lady. "Hello, Genkai-san. You and the breeze are welcome to join us in our trading of stories." The short woman snorted.

"As if. I'm only here to let Yusuke know that that girl of his called and says Atsuko is expecting him home tonight. The breeze, however, will join you promptly, I'm sure." Stepping off the porch, she crossed the courtyard and made her way back to the main part of the house, moving quickly under the gray clouds. Youko left the door open to the elements and walked back to his previous position, sitting down and moving his tail into his lap to groom.

"The Thieves' Village is just that - a village for my subordinates and their families, as well as where the vault that contains my collection - don't laugh, you imbecile, it's a collection and if you call it a hoard I will own your ass to Gandara and back - is located. I'm sure many of my acquaintances and partners are still there, but there is always the chance that they gave up on me and either left - which wouldn't be terrible, only expected - or selected a new leader, which would, truthfully, be rather...Oh, screw that. It would piss me off beyond belief that they could even think to replace me. Now Fushimi Inari, on the other hand, will take a while to explain. The shrine you know is the human version of our own - ours is immeasurably older and far more sacred; it also happens to be the ancestral home of the fox demons. For me it isn't only an ancestral home; I was actually born there. My family, you see, is a long line of silver youko - though I've been the only one for the many centuries since my mother died and the one litter of kits I had with my original mate have all been dead for a very, very long time - and it is the silver foxes who, since ancient times, have been charged with the protection of the shrine. So every fifty years or so I venture back to put up stronger wards and help out for a couple of months with the day-to-day goings-on. It's relaxing, there, and it's a tremendous boost to my ego to have them looking to me as their own personal hero, the Guardian of Fushimi Inari." He laughed, smiling for the first time in weeks. "The kits are so cute, especially the younger ones that attempt to butt in on the older ones' classes. I've really missed them all, so maybe after checking in on everything at the Village I'll spend a few years at the shrine, getting to know everyone. I wonder if old Kaiki is still running the swordsmanship classes?" he mused to himself. "Well, either way, Yusuke, I do have a life to return to. Now that I can devote myself to re-integrating into Makai and don't have to worry about Koenma unless I steal something from him - it wouldn't be the first time, after all - I can finally be myself. And hey, you're always welcome to join me. You'd make a great thief!"

Yusuke shook his head and laughed, tilting his head into a ray of sun that had come into the room through the parting clouds. "Ah, who knows? We have our whole lives ahead of us, after all!"


End file.
